Extreme Harassment Claim Against Ex-Boss

HOUSTON (CN) – A supervisor forced a woman to have sex by threatening to post nude photos of her and found strangers on Craigslist who groped her while he watched, she claims in court. Jane Doe sued Heriberto Latigo on April 16 in Harris County Court. Latigo’s attorney Richard Weaver said Doe has sued his client before. “The plaintiff previously filed a similar lawsuit against my client. We vigorously defended our client in that case. It ended with a nonsuit. Now the plaintiff has hired another lawyer for a second bite at the apple. This is a case about money,” Weaver said in a statement. Doe, a single mother of a 6-year-old girl, claims she and Latigo worked together and started dating in August 2013. Latigo was jealous and controlling, Doe says, and she tried to end their relationship. Latigo had nude photos of her and intimate videos that he posted on social media sites he created under Doe’s name, she says in the complaint. He made good on threats to send the photos and videos to her family and friends and extorted sex from her after forcing his way into her home “numerous” times, Doe says. She claims that he even made her perform sexual favors on him during their work lunch breaks. “After months of abuse, plaintiff made a complaint to the human resources department. Subsequent to an independent investigation by the human resources department, the defendant was terminated from his employment,” the complaint states. Doe says Latigo kept up his menacing behavior and said he would file criminal charges against her and get a lien placed on her home if she sued him. She moved to an apartment to hide from Latigo, but he showed up there in the morning of April 14 and confronted her in the parking garage in front of her daughter, Doe says. “In fear of her life, plaintiff called 911,” the complaint states. “Even after knowing that the plaintiff was calling the police, the defendant refused to let plaintiff shut her car door and kept plaintiff from leaving. Finally, after she screamed for help, the defendant allowed plaintiff and her daughter to leave.” Doe seeks punitive damages for sexual assault, negligence, infliction of emotional distress, intrusion on seclusion, defamation, public disclosure of private facts and a restraining order to keep Latigo from coming within 400 feet of her house, her workplace and her family’s homes. Doe’s attorney Joe Mathew has taken on similar cases before, according to his online profile. He won a $500,000 jury verdict for a client in a revenge porn case that “is the first and largest verdict in the nation for these types of cases,” his profile states. Mathew told Courthouse News that to protect Doe’s privacy he didn’t want to disclose where Latigo and Doe were working when they began dating. When asked why he didn’t file the lawsuit as a confidential matter so the public couldn’t see it, Mathew said that to seal a case one needs an order from the Texas Supreme Court and he wanted to get the case filed quickly because he felt Doe was facing imminent injury. “Another thing is, what happened to her was public: her photographs were everywhere,” he said.